Saturday, August 21, 2010

Bridgette walks more every day that she wants to walk at all. And when she doesn't walk, she crawls faster than ever. We're very pleased by her progress.

She walked all the way across the parking lot from Chili's to our car, wearing Daddy's work badge around her neck.

Just as every baby learns, our new toddler takes her lumps. Here she is demostrating how to fall gracefully and gleefully on her bum.

She's also getting braver on slides. She will go down this one all by herself.

And sometimes she doesn't stick her foot out to force a stop half-way down.

Here she is hanging out in the log. Swinging her legs. Merry as can be.

Jeff has worked at Ancestry.com for almost 6 years now, and for some reason, we have never made it to the summer swim party before this year. Odd.

It's held at a local park. Here is my very own aerial view, taken a few weeks ago when I was hiking a nearby mountain.

Bridgette loved swimming. She even loved going down one of the tube slides with me (pictured above -- the blue one on the left).

She laughed and said, "Weeeee!" the whole way down.

Until we landed in the splash pool. Then she hated the slide. And she hated me too.

Here is a picture of her anxiously standing around waiting for us to finish our dinner so she could get in the pool.

She liked the kiddy pool the best.

She might have liked the wave pool better than she did, but by the time we tried it, it was pretty near bedtime, and she was cold. And also the first wave knocked her over.

But I took her down to the deep waves and we floated about for a while. She seemed to enjoy that.

However, her little body temperature plummeted after so much water fun. The party was in the evening, and it must have been one of the windiest days of the year. Brr...

Bri's far from being a snuggler. Typically, she doesn't really like to be touched. But she let us wrap her up against my body as she shivered quietly for about 15 minutes straight.

We went back to the playground today, and several children took a peculiar interest in her. It was amusing.

First, a girl with long brown hair picked Bridgette up off the slide and carried her around for a while.

And Bridgette let her.

That girl is in the video below depicting Bridgette at the water fountain ball. She's the one who is so concerned that the baby is getting in the water.

The other friendly twosome are pictured below. The older girl, Alyssa, decided that her almost-adopted sister, Emmy, should be best friends with Bri. I missed the picture of the three of them holding hands walking about, but man they were cute.

There's also video of them below that's truly adorable. And also funny.

And this is the expression you get when Bridgette spies her Daddy's ice-cream cone and wanders over in zombie-ice-cream-devourer mode to beg some off him.

Too bad she can't have dairy. We had to distract her big time while Daddy hid to eat his cone alone.

Oh. She's wet because Mommy let her climb in the fountain.

HIGH ALERT! GRANDMA SECTION!

There are lots of videos below. I really like them, but it may be a "family" kind of section if you're easily bored by videos of other people's little kids.

These first four have similar themes but were taken several weeks apart.

Funny! I think the "train" intention didn't go down too well, but Jeff and I were laughing. That little gasp that you might interpret as a worried mom noise? Nothing of the kind. It was a quietly chuckling mom noise.

The longest of the videos. You have to understand that after two years of no mobility, suddenly watching her do all this stuff by herself is very exciting. So exciting that I take lots of video.

Actually, she likes to watch video of herself moving around too. It helps her want to move even more.

And THIS is for all of my public health friends. And for everyone out there trying to lose a few pounds. Remember. Teach your children EARLY to eat healthy food. You know. Like us.

I don't know where to begin. I had so many things running through my head as I read through this post. 1)I love the high five she gives to Jeff when they make it to the car. The body language reads, "Yeah, I'm good and I know it!"2) Adorable swim outfit, but really, who wears a flower clip when they go swimming? Girly-girl. :) And your eyes are beautiful in those cuddly towel pictures!3) I illegally entered the "grandma section" and love the way Bridgette motions "come on" with just a couple of her fingers to that boy on the stairs. Cute!4) We'll have to come on a vacation to Utah so we can visit your mall. Awesome! Our mall doesn't even have an escalator to ride on. C'mon!5) I thought it was funny that in one of the videos, Bri is trying to climb in the fountain, and you tell her not to, but then in a different video the other girls have their shoes off and so Bri joins in the fun. Peer influence!6) Wow, that is a speedy crawl! 7) I'm totally impressed that when you tell her to stand up, she listens!8) ...! (I'm sure there was more, but I can't remember and I need to go to bed)